Fourth Brooklyn Man Charged in ISIS Plot
Remember, about six weeks ago, when the FBI and NYPD popped three Brooklyn guys planning to bomb Coney Island, decamp to Turkey, join ISIS, and assassinate President Obama? (How could you forget.) Yesterday, a fourth Brooklyn man was added to the case, allegedly for raising travel funds for one of the other suspects. Troubling, no?
Dilkhayot Kasimov, a 26-year-old Uzbek citizen living in Brooklyn, faces charges of conspiracy and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. The revised, now unsealed indictment in Brooklyn Federal District Court names him alongside Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, Akhror Saidakhmetov, and Abror Habibov, the three previously charged defendants.
Prosecutors accused Kasimov of working closely with another man, Abror Habibov, to raise $1,600 for a third, Akhror Saidakhmetov, to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Saidakhmetov was carrying the cash when he was intercepted at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Feb. 25 trying to board a flight to Turkey, court papers say.
Kasimov was later detained on immigration charges. Under interrogation, he admitted to delivering the money to Saidakhmetov for the purpose of his travels to Syria. FBI agents also discovered “electronic communications in which Kasimov encouraged others to participate in violent jihad,” according to the indictment.
In a statement, Diego Rodriguez, head of New York’s FBI office, put it succinctly: Kasimov “served as a money man in support of a co-defendant’s efforts to join ISIL,” he wrote.
Kasimov is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow. Juraboev, Saidakhmetov, and Habibov pleaded not guilty last month.